4 ms·

"We would like to clarify our policy on this topic. Account status should not affect any customer's ability to access their library. If any customer has trouble

"We would like to clarify our policy on this topic. Account status should not affect any customer's ability to access their library. If any customer has trouble accessing their content, he or she should contact customer service for help. Thank you for your interest in Kindle."

kmfrk 14y ago
It's astonishing that they persist with the robotic language in their clarification. Something tantamount to "We fucked up, sorry, dude" would help them so much more. I guess it just reflects their attitude towards customers.
- Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
  The odd thing is that with it's physical world stuff, Amazon has, at least in my experience, always been great when it comes to customer service. I'm sure with any business that size there will be people who say otherwise but I can't say that I've heard anyone bad mouthing their customer service which given how many people use them and how much is pretty remarkable. Long way of saying - I don't think Amazon have a culture which discourages good customer service, I think that they have a problem in this specific area.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    I agree that with shipping product, and making sure people can return faulty product for replacement, Amazon is fantastic. And this stuff about auto-detection of supposedly bad accounts, and closing of those accounts with very little detail or ability to appeal is worrying, but not limited to Amazon. (That doesn't make it any more acceptable!) Where Paypal (or their honest customers) are at risk of losing many thousands of dollars from fraud I can understand that some[1] people are going to be innocent victims of heavy handed policies. [1] For some values of 'some' including 'too many'.
  - gnufied 14y ago
    Depends on where you are. It might be pretty good when dealing with Amazon in US, but I have been on the receiving end more than once when I order stuff to India. One of books I ordered, I never received and yet it was marked delivered in their history. I did not know what to do back then and case got closed just like that.
    - nfg 14y ago
      A while back I broke the screen of my kindle while traveling. Not only was I surprised that Amazon covered this under the warranty, but the service I received was really fantastic. The Kindle had originally been shipped to Ireland (where I live), but I was in India when it was broken. I phoned Amazon and they had a replacement shipped to Kathmandu (the next stop on my itinerary with dates certain enough that I was happy to have something shipped there). It was shipped fine and they reimbursed the cost of shipping back the broken unit (I sent a scan of the distinctly dodgy receipt issued by a Kathmandu shipping agent) and they also paid me back the import charge that Nepalese customs levied on the "new" Kindle. All told I was blown away by the quality of the service given the funniness of what I was asking them to do (shipping to random locations etc).
      - Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
        You hear a lot of stuff like this, though it makes sense - keep the happy user's Kindle working, they keep buying books.
      - nagrom 14y ago
        Allow me to counter your anecdote. My 18-month-old Kindle Keyboard screen broke last month, while I was travelling in Russia. It hadn't been impacted or scratched, it just started to become unresponsive on about 40% of the surface and failed. I got offered 10% off a new kindle basic or kindle touch once I got home, despite the customer service rep admitting that a kindle should last longer than only 18 months. I'm so annoyed about this that I am seriously considering buying a competitor's replacement instead.
        14y ago
  - makomk 14y ago
    Amazon have a policy of doing the same to any customer that returns more than a tiny number of physical items, as I recall.
    - Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
      Details?
    - Kadin 14y ago
      You'll have to define what a "tiny number" means in this context, but I've certainly returned a bunch of stuff to Amazon over the years that I've been a customer, and they haven't cut me -- or anyone I know personally -- off yet. Their return policy is decent but not particularly generous or anything: if you return something that's not defective, you have to pay the freight back to them, and they have to receive it before they issue you the credit. I suspect their return rate is fairly low compared to retailers with more generous policies (e.g. Zappos, REI, LL Bean, etc.).
      - biafra 14y ago
        Thats different within the EU. If you return it within 14 days and its worth more than 40EUR Amazon has to pay for shipping. Its called "Distance Selling Act" (Fernabsatzgesetz in Germany). It applies to all non digital goods sold online except Software and Music.
  - mamoswined 14y ago
    Yes, they have really been responsive and responsible about the occasional lost package and other shipping problems. When I lived in Scandinavia, there was nothing comparable to Amazon Prime at all in terms of convenience and customer service.
  - jonathansizz 14y ago
    I got burned several years ago, when a $150 textbook was stolen during delivery. It was sent via FedEx, and someone somewhere along the pipeline had 'signed' for it by writing my name in all upper-case letters. I went through a lengthy process of submitting paperwork, at the end of which I was told that since the book had been signed for in my name, I must have received it and therefore I would not be compensated (so why did I have to spend time and money jumping through hoops?). No doubt I should have pursued this further, but at that point I let it go. I just cancelled my account and haven't purchased anything from them since. I guess its a tough situation when a customer claims they didn't receive an item, but I was a regular customer who spend hundreds of dollars per year with them, so they could've given me the benefit of the doubt at least once.
- mikeash 14y ago
  Big companies persist in corporate-speak even though everyone hates it. I never have understood why. They must think that it's the best way to go, somehow.
  - calinet6 14y ago
    It's the legal department. Each public statement has to be carefully evaluated for its potential to open up lawsuits or bad press. The neutral, robotic tone with ambiguous statements is absolutely required to protect them from the masses.
    - nodata 14y ago
      "Thank you for your interest in Kindle." This line is not from the legal department. You see it everywhere: * "Thank you for not smoking." * "Thank you for your understanding." The unintended effect (for me at least) is that sentence stands out and I pay less attention to the poor excuse written directly before it. A bit like the way a politician does not answer a question.
  - lmm 14y ago
    I don't think everyone hates it. On a site like this obviously the cool thing is to claim to prefer startup-style error messages like "oops, everything's fucked, sorry dude". But fashions change fast; a big company writing in that style would (by the time they'd approved the procedures) likely come off like your parents trying to sound cool by using the hip phrases they've read about. And that's without even getting into how older people (the HN readership is overwhelmingly, unrepresentatively young) tend to care a lot more about politeness.
    - mikeash 14y ago
      There are plenty of good alternatives out there besides useless lawyer-speak and profanity-filled startup-speak. It is possible to write a message which is polite, official, and doesn't sound like it came from a robot.
  - brown9-2 14y ago
- calinet6 14y ago
  This is what any company with global brand recognition would say. Anything more would open them up to horrendous lawsuits, and anything less might cause more criticism. It's a well-crafted statement of fact with an invitation to solve issues through their customer service department—basically admitting they were in the wrong (but not too much), and that their policy has been clarified. The robotic language is a legal necessity for corporations and it does not reflect on their attitude towards customers in the least.
  - chucknelson 14y ago
    Exactly. The bigger you get, the more you need to protect yourself, especially in customer relations communication. You can't keep the casual startup mentality forever (well, in many cases anyway).
  - kmfrk 14y ago
    I still think there is plenty of legal wiggle room to sound like a carbon-based lifeform. I am not really sure what legal case this would open them up to, but we have to assume they've consulted with their attorneys prior to writing the statement. There is also an opportunity cost to going all legal, which is the attrition of brand perception and customer relations. Apple managed to pull both off during Antennagate. Maybe Amazon cut the cord to US-East as a diversion and hoped that and the Apple keynote would distract from this screw-up. :P EDIT: Which is not to even touch on the subject of assuaging the fear that consumers might suddenly lose all access to their entire library in the cloud. There is a lot at stake here, and Amazon have done nothing to dispel this apprehension arisen in light of this event. It's not just a customer catastrophe, it's an e-book/Kindle catastrophe.
  - TillE 14y ago
    "Thank you for your interest in Kindle" at the end is absolutely not necessary and comes across as patronizing, clueless, and robotic.
  - DodgyEggplant 14y ago
    Amazon can handle the possible legal issues of human like messages
- jmilloy 14y ago
  My sense is that any time a company issues a statement or response about a customer service issue, someone will dislike the tone and comment about it. This gives an inflated appearance of dissatisfaction with statements by large companies and over-perpetuates the corporate PR-speak meme. That's not to say that companies never dodge key issues, refuse to own up, or spin things in their favor. But in this case, it sounds like someone at Amazon simply fixed the mistake, admitted the mistake, and clarified their position. Just because they didn't use profanity and an informal tone doesn't change the content.
- coliveira 14y ago
  I much prefer the English explanation than a "sorry dude". First I am not a "dude".... and don't even get me started with the f* word, please.
- Agathos 14y ago
  "The problem has been resolved. There was never any problem. Oceana has always been at war with Eastasia."
piquadrat 14y ago
Because contacting customer service worked so great the first three times...
- alan_cx 14y ago
  That is the exact problem, and one they seem to have very much avoided addressing. I have absolutely no doubt that 99% of these sort of problems would be quickly and easily resolved, IF one could adequately contact a responsive customers services department. Yeah, this is about DRM, but IMHO, the bigger issue is that of getting hold of some one to help and resolve these issues. I don't think any of us mind thongs going wrong, that happens, its what these people do or don't do that counts. (Yes, I see the typo, it amused me so I left it :) )
conradfr 14y ago
This reply contradicts the original story.
tjoff 14y ago
Yeah, and we saw how well that worked yesterday...

kmfrk 14y ago

It's astonishing that they persist with the robotic language in their clarification. Something tantamount to "We fucked up, sorry, dude" would help them so much more. I guess it just reflects their attitude towards customers.

Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
The odd thing is that with it's physical world stuff, Amazon has, at least in my experience, always been great when it comes to customer service. I'm sure with any business that size there will be people who say otherwise but I can't say that I've heard anyone bad mouthing their customer service which given how many people use them and how much is pretty remarkable. Long way of saying - I don't think Amazon have a culture which discourages good customer service, I think that they have a problem in this specific area.
- DanBC 14y ago
  I agree that with shipping product, and making sure people can return faulty product for replacement, Amazon is fantastic. And this stuff about auto-detection of supposedly bad accounts, and closing of those accounts with very little detail or ability to appeal is worrying, but not limited to Amazon. (That doesn't make it any more acceptable!) Where Paypal (or their honest customers) are at risk of losing many thousands of dollars from fraud I can understand that some[1] people are going to be innocent victims of heavy handed policies. [1] For some values of 'some' including 'too many'.
- gnufied 14y ago
  Depends on where you are. It might be pretty good when dealing with Amazon in US, but I have been on the receiving end more than once when I order stuff to India. One of books I ordered, I never received and yet it was marked delivered in their history. I did not know what to do back then and case got closed just like that.
  - nfg 14y ago
    A while back I broke the screen of my kindle while traveling. Not only was I surprised that Amazon covered this under the warranty, but the service I received was really fantastic. The Kindle had originally been shipped to Ireland (where I live), but I was in India when it was broken. I phoned Amazon and they had a replacement shipped to Kathmandu (the next stop on my itinerary with dates certain enough that I was happy to have something shipped there). It was shipped fine and they reimbursed the cost of shipping back the broken unit (I sent a scan of the distinctly dodgy receipt issued by a Kathmandu shipping agent) and they also paid me back the import charge that Nepalese customs levied on the "new" Kindle. All told I was blown away by the quality of the service given the funniness of what I was asking them to do (shipping to random locations etc).
    - Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
      You hear a lot of stuff like this, though it makes sense - keep the happy user's Kindle working, they keep buying books.
    - nagrom 14y ago
      Allow me to counter your anecdote. My 18-month-old Kindle Keyboard screen broke last month, while I was travelling in Russia. It hadn't been impacted or scratched, it just started to become unresponsive on about 40% of the surface and failed. I got offered 10% off a new kindle basic or kindle touch once I got home, despite the customer service rep admitting that a kindle should last longer than only 18 months. I'm so annoyed about this that I am seriously considering buying a competitor's replacement instead.
      - 14y ago
- makomk 14y ago
  Amazon have a policy of doing the same to any customer that returns more than a tiny number of physical items, as I recall.
  - Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
    Details?
  - Kadin 14y ago
    You'll have to define what a "tiny number" means in this context, but I've certainly returned a bunch of stuff to Amazon over the years that I've been a customer, and they haven't cut me -- or anyone I know personally -- off yet. Their return policy is decent but not particularly generous or anything: if you return something that's not defective, you have to pay the freight back to them, and they have to receive it before they issue you the credit. I suspect their return rate is fairly low compared to retailers with more generous policies (e.g. Zappos, REI, LL Bean, etc.).
    - biafra 14y ago
      Thats different within the EU. If you return it within 14 days and its worth more than 40EUR Amazon has to pay for shipping. Its called "Distance Selling Act" (Fernabsatzgesetz in Germany). It applies to all non digital goods sold online except Software and Music.
- mamoswined 14y ago
  Yes, they have really been responsive and responsible about the occasional lost package and other shipping problems. When I lived in Scandinavia, there was nothing comparable to Amazon Prime at all in terms of convenience and customer service.
- jonathansizz 14y ago
  I got burned several years ago, when a $150 textbook was stolen during delivery. It was sent via FedEx, and someone somewhere along the pipeline had 'signed' for it by writing my name in all upper-case letters. I went through a lengthy process of submitting paperwork, at the end of which I was told that since the book had been signed for in my name, I must have received it and therefore I would not be compensated (so why did I have to spend time and money jumping through hoops?). No doubt I should have pursued this further, but at that point I let it go. I just cancelled my account and haven't purchased anything from them since. I guess its a tough situation when a customer claims they didn't receive an item, but I was a regular customer who spend hundreds of dollars per year with them, so they could've given me the benefit of the doubt at least once.
mikeash 14y ago
Big companies persist in corporate-speak even though everyone hates it. I never have understood why. They must think that it's the best way to go, somehow.
- calinet6 14y ago
  It's the legal department. Each public statement has to be carefully evaluated for its potential to open up lawsuits or bad press. The neutral, robotic tone with ambiguous statements is absolutely required to protect them from the masses.
  - nodata 14y ago
    "Thank you for your interest in Kindle." This line is not from the legal department. You see it everywhere: * "Thank you for not smoking." * "Thank you for your understanding." The unintended effect (for me at least) is that sentence stands out and I pay less attention to the poor excuse written directly before it. A bit like the way a politician does not answer a question.
- lmm 14y ago
  I don't think everyone hates it. On a site like this obviously the cool thing is to claim to prefer startup-style error messages like "oops, everything's fucked, sorry dude". But fashions change fast; a big company writing in that style would (by the time they'd approved the procedures) likely come off like your parents trying to sound cool by using the hip phrases they've read about. And that's without even getting into how older people (the HN readership is overwhelmingly, unrepresentatively young) tend to care a lot more about politeness.
  - mikeash 14y ago
    There are plenty of good alternatives out there besides useless lawyer-speak and profanity-filled startup-speak. It is possible to write a message which is polite, official, and doesn't sound like it came from a robot.
- brown9-2 14y ago
calinet6 14y ago
This is what any company with global brand recognition would say. Anything more would open them up to horrendous lawsuits, and anything less might cause more criticism. It's a well-crafted statement of fact with an invitation to solve issues through their customer service department—basically admitting they were in the wrong (but not too much), and that their policy has been clarified. The robotic language is a legal necessity for corporations and it does not reflect on their attitude towards customers in the least.
- chucknelson 14y ago
  Exactly. The bigger you get, the more you need to protect yourself, especially in customer relations communication. You can't keep the casual startup mentality forever (well, in many cases anyway).
- kmfrk 14y ago
  I still think there is plenty of legal wiggle room to sound like a carbon-based lifeform. I am not really sure what legal case this would open them up to, but we have to assume they've consulted with their attorneys prior to writing the statement. There is also an opportunity cost to going all legal, which is the attrition of brand perception and customer relations. Apple managed to pull both off during Antennagate. Maybe Amazon cut the cord to US-East as a diversion and hoped that and the Apple keynote would distract from this screw-up. :P EDIT: Which is not to even touch on the subject of assuaging the fear that consumers might suddenly lose all access to their entire library in the cloud. There is a lot at stake here, and Amazon have done nothing to dispel this apprehension arisen in light of this event. It's not just a customer catastrophe, it's an e-book/Kindle catastrophe.
- TillE 14y ago
  "Thank you for your interest in Kindle" at the end is absolutely not necessary and comes across as patronizing, clueless, and robotic.
- DodgyEggplant 14y ago
  Amazon can handle the possible legal issues of human like messages
jmilloy 14y ago
My sense is that any time a company issues a statement or response about a customer service issue, someone will dislike the tone and comment about it. This gives an inflated appearance of dissatisfaction with statements by large companies and over-perpetuates the corporate PR-speak meme. That's not to say that companies never dodge key issues, refuse to own up, or spin things in their favor. But in this case, it sounds like someone at Amazon simply fixed the mistake, admitted the mistake, and clarified their position. Just because they didn't use profanity and an informal tone doesn't change the content.
coliveira 14y ago
I much prefer the English explanation than a "sorry dude". First I am not a "dude".... and don't even get me started with the f* word, please.
Agathos 14y ago
"The problem has been resolved. There was never any problem. Oceana has always been at war with Eastasia."

piquadrat 14y ago

Because contacting customer service worked so great the first three times...

alan_cx 14y ago
That is the exact problem, and one they seem to have very much avoided addressing. I have absolutely no doubt that 99% of these sort of problems would be quickly and easily resolved, IF one could adequately contact a responsive customers services department. Yeah, this is about DRM, but IMHO, the bigger issue is that of getting hold of some one to help and resolve these issues. I don't think any of us mind thongs going wrong, that happens, its what these people do or don't do that counts. (Yes, I see the typo, it amused me so I left it :) )

conradfr 14y ago

This reply contradicts the original story.

tjoff 14y ago

Yeah, and we saw how well that worked yesterday...